Albert's Attic Gallery

I think Wolsey might have been the first UK manufacturer to bring out a ‘billboard’ or ‘fireguard’ UHF aerial. This is an inherently wideband design, but most makes seem to peak in Group B. Although useful for mounting with their back to the wall in places where an aerial that sticks out would look bad (I’ve seen them hidden amongst ivy), the general feeling in the trade is that this design is not quite all it’s cracked up to be. These aerials have never been massively popular, although a few people seem to love them, and sometimes when travelling you might see hundreds of them in one small area.

When used for vertical polarisation this design can perform impressively when multipath or co-channel interference is a problem. They are not at all good in this respect when used for horizontal polarisation, but apparently can be helpful when tidal fading is a problem. Most makes have the disadvantage that the gain falls off badly at the very top of the band, and curiously the graphs shown here don’t include channel 68 . . .

Thanks to Roger Piper for this contribution.

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